The diurnal cycle of rainfall over the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean is studied for the period 23 rd October 2001 to 31 st October 2003 using the hourly data from the Triton buoy positioned at 1.5°S and 90°E. An analysis of the active and weak spells of the rainfall for different seasons showed that the rainfall peaked in the late evening hours in Winter, Summer and Fall seasons and in early morning hours (Spring) in 2002. The active spell of the rainfall peaked in the afternoon hours, during Winter, Spring and Summer seasons in 2003, which agrees with the previous results of Janowiak et al (1994). An analysis of the rainfall events showed that Fall 2002 had maximum rainfall events (90) and minimum (60) were observed in Spring 2003. Further it was seen that majority of the rain events (> 60%) were less than 3 hours duration throughout the study period. The longer duration rainfall events (i.e rain events greater than 6 hour duration) contributed significantly to Spring 2002 (20% of the total rainfall) and Winter 2003 (21% of the total rainfall) seasons respectively. Harmonic analysis of the hourly rainfall data for different seasons revealed that diurnal harmonic, explains more than 80% of the variance for all the seasons. Further, the diurnal harmonic has the maximum amplitude for all seasons except summer, where the semidiurnal and six hourly harmonics are significant.
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